Suburbs' sacred places

I have only lived in suburban Parker, Colorado since March. Before that I lived in a more rural location in Colorado. Parker definitely has its advantages. It is a very short commute from my house to work. But it is also pleasing. There is a park across the street, often with deer grazing alongside joggers and dog-walkers, and many other parks throughout the community. There are lots of trees and hills. People keep up their lawns and decorate with flowers. Lots of birds and rabbits. One has a strong feeling of security.

I am sure that like in the cities, suburban businesses come and go. But when they do, new businesses take their place rapidly here in suburbia. So, there is always a feeling of newness and pleasing things to look at. The thriving business that employs me is remodeling after existing here for a dozen years. New floors, new ceilings, new bathrooms, new paint job, using the colors modern psychologists say are most pleasing. The marketplace is thriving all around the community.

Recently I traveled twice to Denver, and the trips made me appreciate Parker even more. Businesses leave the city, but will new ones rapidly replace the ones that leave? It doesn't look like it. Many signs are in Spanish. The new businesses are immigrant enterprises.

Latinos and Asians are also coming to the suburbs in growing numbers. I often work the three to ten p.m. shift. One sees more Latinos and Asians at night, (lots of people from India have moved here, it seems) shopping alongside white teenagers who seem to find the big box stores and their parking lots fun places to hang out.

One things cities have is sacred places. Denver's most sacred place is arguably Mile High Stadium, where the Broncos play half their games. It isn't called Mile High any more; now it is called Sports Authority Field, since a local sporting goods business bought the rights. The second most sacred place is the Pepsi Center, where the Colorado Avalanche plays hockey, the Denver Nuggets play basketball, and musicians play concerts.

Speaking of concerts, let me not forget Red Rocks Amphitheater. But that beautiful place is in the sacred Red Rocks country just beyond the suburbs of Golden and Lakewood.

I keep using the word sacred, but haven't yet used the words churches or cathedrals. Denver has some. In the suburbs the big churches are Mormon or evangelical. Someone told me recently that there are ten thousand Mormons in the county where I live. If you see a man wearing a white shirt and tie, he is either a lawyer or a young Mormon man who has a colleague nearby. Mormons go to church all day long on Sunday. Someone explained to me that is because Mormons are organized geographically. One geographic unit worships in early morning, another in late morning, another early afternoon, and so on, all using the same building. The parking lots of these big, nicely landscaped churches are packed with cars all day long into the evenings on Sundays, and often on week nights, too.

The sacred places here are the ball fields, rec centers, parks and schools. Joel Kotkin writes,

Perhaps we need to redefine continuity to be less about stylish brick and mortar and more about what animates peoples' feelings about place and their connections to it.

Kotkin writes today in New Geography about sacred spaces in suburbia. He notes that while cities have historical churches and cathedral, urban dwellers are more secular and less religious than suburbanites. Here protestants and Mormons are in high numbers. Kotkin writes,

When I worked in Houston after the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the leading institutions helping the evacuees were not the established mainline churches, but the often vast evangelical ones, many of them housed in uninspiring barn-like structures on the suburban frontier.

That is certainly true in the suburbs around Denver. The evangelicals congregate in box-like structures. They are vibrant, though, and there are lots of evangelicals.

The Catholics pay huge sums of money to send their children to Catholic schools. The Catholic schools in the suburbs outside of Denver have the best sports teams in every.single.sport. Their kids go on to college.

Kotkin writes,

In the end, I would argue that “sacred space” in the current context is basically about home – those places where one has lived, children have played, pets have lived out their lives and where holidays, religious or not, are shared with neighbors. Suburbia not only does not negate this kind of sacred space but, in a surprising way, nurtures it.

Kotkin links to a speech by author D.J. Waldie,

Lakewood, he notes, is a place that urban planners would like to have seen “bulldozed away years ago to make room for something better,” yet the people there, increasingly Latino and Asian, do not feel their suburb is the invidious thing reviled in urban-studies program or criticized by advocates of forced densification. These are places that people adhere to, Waldie says, even if the appeal is difficult for outsiders to appreciate.

“I believe that places acquire their sacredness through this giving and taking. And with that ever-returning touch, we acquire something sacred from the place where we live. What we acquire, of course, is a home,” he suggests. “It's a question of falling in love … falling in love with the place where you are; even a place like mine … so ordinary, so commonplace, and my home.”